Turning Showdown Value Into a Bluff

A bluff is when you bet with what you believe to be the worst hand in order to get a better hand to fold. Usually you want to do this with hands that are very unlikely to win at showdown and fall into the bottom portion of your range. If you have a hand with good showdown value, you would usually like to realize that value and win the pot on the strength of your hand. Also, if you have mediocre showdown value but you’re at the top of your range according to how you have played your hand, you would probably check down or call the bet you’re facing rather than making an aggressive action yourself. This is a good fundamental approach to deciding whether you should bluff or not on the river and if you follow it pretty strictly, your play will be balanced enough to keep your opponents on their toes.
This week, however, I played two hands where I had pretty decent showdown value that was in the middle-to-top portion of my range and I decided to turn them into a bluff anyways due to the way my opponent played their hand. Let’s look at the hands.

No-limit, $5-$5 game, there’s a straddle this hand. A weak player in middle position limps. He plays too many hands and often folds after limping. I’m in the cutoff and make it $40 to go with K 8. The big blind (BB), whom I’ve never played with, calls with about $650 behind. Straddle and limper both fold. The flop is A K 3. He checks and calls $55. At this point, I planned to check the hand down unless I improved. The turn is the 6. He now leads out for $60. I didn’t think his range would include many flushes when played this way, and it looks like it’s almost always an ace with a spade kicker. Because of this, my plan changed. Sometimes I’ll call when I put my opponent on a weak pair with a flush draw and plan on betting or raising the river to win there. In this instance, I thought it would be more effective to raise the turn to an amount that left a two-thirds pot-size jam on the river for maximum leverage. So, I made it $205 with the plan to move all-in on almost any non-spade river if called. Perhaps I would check if the ace paired, but that’s about it. He did call my turn raise and the river bricked off.

He checked, I gave a short think and shoved for around $450 effective and he tanked for a very long time before eventually calling with Kx Q. I read the hand correctly, in fact, his absolute hand strength was worse than I gave him though it was pretty similar relatively since it’s unlikely I play any one pair hands that way (I’m not sure he would realize that they are basically the same hand but I digress). I felt really good about how I played the hand even though it didn’t go my way, and you have to give the guy credit for making a gutsy call.

Still playing $5-$5, another hand came up that was interesting. I defend the BB playing $1,500 plus deep with A-7 offsuit to a button raise from a player I’ve never played with before. The flop is 7-4-2 rainbow and it’s checked through. The turn is the 3, putting out a flush draw. I bet $25 and he calls. I think he probably has ace-high or maybe 5-5 or 6-6. The 6-5 straight got there on the turn, but I think it’s unlikely he checks back an open-ended straight draw with no showdown value on the flop. The river is an offsuit queen. I decided to make a pretty thin value bet of $45. I expect him to call with ace-high somewhat regularly, and think he will definitely call with a pair. In addition, he’s unlikely to raise with any value hand that isn’t a set or better, which is pretty unlikely considering how he’s played so far. He made it $155 after thinking for a little bit. I think it’s possible he has A-Q, or diamonds with a queen and is going for some thin value, and also possible, though not probable, that he’s raising on a complete bluff. I don’t expect that out of many players in this game, but it’s certainly a possibility with some. If he’s raising for value with a queen I think he will most likely fold to a three-bet, and he will definitely fold his air to a three-bet.

He’s very unlikely to four-bet with a worse hand. In fact, I think he’s very unlikely to four-bet with anything worse than A-5. So, since his range is so bluff and thin-value heavy, I decided to make it $400. He quickly folded and I won the pot. If I thought he was bluffing pretty often, but not raising with a queen, then my raise would be pretty poor, but since I think a good portion of his range is made up of hands that are better than mine that he would fold to a three-bet, I thought the best play was to turn my hand with good showdown value into a bluff.

One other nice lesson we can take from these two hands is one that we should apply to every hand we play. Quite often we can make sound decisions and what we think is the best play on every street and still come out on the bad end of the pot and that’s OK. If we keep playing in such a way where our lines make sense and are usually in good balance, we can then adjust to a situation where we need to play exploitively on the fly and increase our expected profit from a hand no matter what the actual outcome is. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG